TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE POLITICAL STAGNATION.

For.rrremes anticipated uncommon activity at this period of the present year. It is usually a time of movement in the political world, because Parliament is sitting and is in the heat of the session. The momentum was expected to be greater this year from the circumstances of Lord Palmerston's position when he appealed to the country. Some excitement had been caused by the difference between himself and certain sections of the Liberal party; he made the election a personal question, and obtained a large majority; hence it was thought that he would lead a very triumphant career, dashing out measures, and compelling a reluctant majority to swallow whatever he forced down its throat. It was supposed that some of the discontented Liberals would either join in this course, if the Minister should be liberal enough, or would renew the warfare that preceded the election if he should depart from his implied pledges. The leader of the Conservative minority reconciled himself to his position by the avowed expectation that "Party" would be revived, and that the strong Ministerial majority would once more occasion political movement, and raise a counter-movement, reestablishing if not Whig and Tory, at least Liberal and Conservative with a distinct division between them, and a contest for measures and power. All these calculations have been disappointed. The heat of the session is as cold as mid-winter. lue, there is a great deal of life going on. Two operahouses are open ; we have the Crystal Palace, the Manchester Exhibition, the Handel Festival, and Jullien's " Musical Congress." Oxford is making itself felt in the Education movement, in friendly competition with Prince Albert and the Congress at Willis's Rooms. London never looked so populous, and the newspapers have their vicissitudes from abroad. It is in politics that we find the deadness ; and if the House of Commons mechanically preserves the habit of restlessness on secondary questions, to real political influences it is torpid. Instead of reviving, Party appears to be utterly paralyzed.

The House of Commons has not indulged. in long debates, but it has prolonged the sittings, in order to compress into each night debates upon separate subjects enough for a week. And if each Member has not been content to be silent, under the pressure of the universal hurry, and the dread of being stopped, he has "cut it short." Once familiar voices are seldom heard. Nothing is more curious than the aspect of the House during these discussions. The promised watch upon Ministers is scarcely, kept. Mr. Gladstone, who was to be such a thorn in the side of Lord Palmerston, "waits" so long that the friends of Ministers arc almost uneasy at his quietude, and put forward provocatives to make him break it. Cobden, however, is scarcely more absent from the debate than Gladstone. And where is " Lord John" ? Silent too or speaking only as a man who stands apart—a spectator. SU:James Graham looks on as if he felt a lively interest, and speaks now and then if it is to correct some historical point ; but that is all. It is not that subjects to talk about are wanting. Quite the reverse ; there is an unusual number of questionable acts which demand scrutiny,—law-reforms too crude to pass, bills begun to be recommenced, public buildings begun to be abandoned, public money voted for doubtful or even unexplained objects. The still small voice of the "private Member" occasionally calls these duties to mind ; but the call falls flat. Ministers reply, in various forms and tones of mild "conciliation," that it is "all right " ; and every question is hushed. The subdued debating leaves the political atmosphere stagnant ; the material stillness is exceeded by a sort of moral silence ; and it is so great in the House that you may hear a bill drop.

Of course there are reasons for any condition however extraor dinary and strange. One obvious reason for the present situation is, that the Minister is supposed to be too strong for any resistance to have a chance of success. Circumstances out of doors have contributed to weaken antagonism against him. If there is any attempt at attack upon him, he turns it aside by an immediate assent. The willingness of Ministers to do whatever they are asked—if they are asked enough—is quite charming. They are ready to concede anything to importunity. The Jew Bill was volunteered. Sir De Lacy Evans has something to say about military reform—but military reform is promised. Ministers will give anything—even church-rates. Sir John 'frelawny was going to ask for them, but his mouth is stopped by the promise of a Ministerial measure on church-rates ; and Sir John Pakington is silenced by a promise of the bill "this session." "Anything else?" is the only question. Fortunatus has all you want in his purse, from a reform bill to a new bridge or a new licensing system. Usually, if a political artist is employed upon some great work,

he invites friends to look at it, and at all events produces specimens. Such is not the case at present. The military education scheme has been.kept under a close screen ; the new licensing system proposed by Sir George Grey, is as great a mystery as the Reform Bill; the manner in which the church-rates are to be settled is entirely unknown. We must take everything upon trust, and wait fill 1858.

But what will be the end of this state of things? "It cannot last," cries that sapient person Everybody; "something must bring it to an end.' But the something appears not. Some say that so intense a tranquillity must, like an extreme stillness of the atmosphere, forebode a thunderstorm: but at present no sign

of thunder is seen in the horizon. There is no appearance of any new war abroad—at least nothing unusual for Lord Palmerston 's own handling. There is not the slightest sign of any domestic disturbance. The working classes do not announce that "the time has arrived," &c.; Scotland allows her Unicorn to sleep ; Ireland is boasting her tranquillity and her prosperity. The speculations of one set of politicians is founded upon the age and health of the Premier: it is impossible, they are saying, that he can stand the wear and tear much longer; already he looks considerably aged by the harassing circumstances of his position, and it is predicted that, unless he consent to break down suddenly, he must retire to a marquisate and the consultative repose of a Lansdowne or a Peel. Some are remarking the inherent weakness of the present Cabinet—its want of commanding talent or prestige, and are reckoning that as soon as it is forced to come to the rough and difficult work of political reform, it must break down. The promises postponed to l858 must at all events arrive at maturity in that year, if only by the force of accumulated liability ; and how can such a Cabinet then contend with real Reformers on the one side and insidious Conservative Reformers on the other?

CIVIL SERVICE OBSTRUCTION.

LAST year Lord Goderich moved a resolution for introducing competitive examinations as the means of admission to the Civil Service ; but on a statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the intentions of Government, Lord Ooderich was induced to leave the matter in official hands, and little has been done. The principle of competitive examination had then been partially adopted in the Audit Office and in four other departments ; it has since been partially adopted in the Home Office, and entirely in the Public Works Office ; but no attempt has been made to introduce it into the Admiralty, the Exchequer, the Foreign Officio, or the Post-office. Lord Goderich asks, this year, why it is that the plan has not been more completely carried. out ? Other Members Join in the inquiry, and ask whether the competition is not in point of fact a delusion. The reply of Sir George Cornewall Lewis in part explains the mystery, but only in part. It amounts to this. The order in Council did not abolish the prerogative of the Crown in nominating candidates for appointment in the civil service ; on the contrary, it left that prerogative entirely untouched, and Sir George Lewis never promised to annul it. He did promise that persons who were nominated by the Crown, or by the superiors of the departments, should be subjected to an examination in order to test their qualifications. Instead of professing any intention to introduce the system of open competition, the Government has always distinctly stated its objection to that system, and its intention not to give it a trial. Much may be said on both sides. The examination tends to prevent the appointment of persons ludicrously disqualified by ignorance or other forms of incapacity from taking the public money on the pretext of performing the publio service. on the other hand, if appointments to tho civil service were rendered necessarily dependent upon success in a certain class of examinations, we should see, besides many others, two very inconvenient consequences. First, the civil servants would attain, to their posts as a matter of right, and it would be quite impossible that they could feel that degree of dependence of their superiors which is essential to subordination and discipline. In all households, from the greatest to the smallest, it is necessary that there should be a qualified power of refusing appointment or promotion, and an absolute power of dismissal. Good administration consists in properly applying such large powers. The other consequence is even more serious. Scholastic examinations do not test the fitness of men for public employments. It is not necessary to repeat the evidence of that fact from the correspondence on the Civil Service, in which men like Sir James Stephen show that some of the most successful persons at examination prove to be unsuited to the kind. of duty intrusted to them, and that some of the ablest, the most learned and scientific men in the public service, could not have passed the requisite examination at the proper age. The absolute adoption of the examination plan would tend to establish in the civil service a corps of mandarins more priggish than efficient. The examination may be employed as a means of testing qualification, but a certain dis..iretion in the nomination is still desirable. This is the answer to the demand for examination as the one test of admission, and it appears to us that the answer is strong.

The weakness does not lie in the reasoning of the answer, but in the circumstances behind. The competitive system might not be so good as the nominative system, if the latter were honestly and sincerely carried out; but it is not so. The true motive for not admitting the examination system is less to protect the civil service against the introduction of incompetent prigs, than to protect a system of appointment by favour in order to purchase political support or even personal and official support. If " khutput " is not known in our public departments—if offices are no longer bought and sold—they are distributed by favour; and the fact encourages a species of political trading almost as naked as that of the Stock Exchange, almost as demoralized as that of Capel Court. If the advocates of the examination system could. contrive any means by which the employment of the public service could be assimilated to that of a profession, they would solve the problem. There is no difficulty in subjecting the candidates, on admission into their profession, by means of a public examination, in the profession of medicine ; and virtually the same rule applies in the church and the law. Some kind of qualification of a technical kind every candidate must prove before he can receive orders, handle a brief, or sign a prescription. There is a difficulty in introducing this principle into the civil service, because the kind of work is one that does not find private as well as public employment as in the ease of law or physic.

But the practical difficulties are not the true reason of the obstruction. Ministers would admit improvement, and welcome it, if they did not apprehend an ulterior effect. We see the working of their motives most distinctly when we turn to the Army. Here we find commissions given away by favour and on payment of sums of money ; and we find the same proposals for improvement, with the same effect—professed willingness to concede, and obstinate resolve to hinder improvement. Thus the most obIAMB abuses are maintained with a perseverance that would be incredible or unintelligible if it were not for the one motive behind. Even the expensiveness of mess, against which the Commander-in-chief has set his face, is an abuse to which the Army clings as it has clung for generations : and what is the consequence of all this expensiveness, of these cumbersome regulations and detrimental customs ? The one broad and striking effect is, to keep the appointments in the Army mainly to certain classes ; and the general effect of the obstructive rules and detrimental customs of the public service is, to preserve the higher class of appointments for a particular range of families. It is here that the grand motive seems to lurk. If all the outposts of the service were placed. in a state of thorough improvement, and were really thrown open so as to admit "the best man to the best place," how could the central "keep," whether of the civil or military service, be guarded, as an appanage of particular families, against the encroachments of reform ? It is as necessary to preserve the manners and customs in the inferior grades of the service as at the mess-table, for these are the outposts.

NATIONAL EDUCATION FROM OXFORD.

SHOULD the Oxford plan of examinations be carried out in the spirit of its inception, it seems likely enough to settle the question of national education, in a manner quite unforeseen. The plan has one remarkable emission, but it offers the incentives for supplying that omission in a mode superior to any hitherto suggested. It cannot fail to be of the greatest assistance in shaping the education for the middle classes, and also for the working classes—in fact for all classes. It has already been anticipated, that those who are in possession of ample means, but whose objects in life are not of a scholastic or professional turn, would greatly prefer the comparatively limited course of study laid down in the new plan, to an ordinary university course ; and would be content with the testimonial afforded by the title of " Associate of Arts," without striving for the higher titles of Bachelor or Master. But the plan indicates with sufficient distinctness the sort of education which would lead to distinction, and which the best judges of such matters consider most suitable for the great,er number of young men in the country. In the first place, it is considered desirable that youths should be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and have some acquaintance with the ordinary elements of religious knowledge. The proposition thus stated will be denied by very few ; and even if parents were to hold back their sons from examination on the point of religious knowledge, it is probable that many who are Dissenters would still permit their children to attend, if it were simply to test their having acquired a certain range of information. The larger number might do this, if the examiners conducted their inquiry in a really catholic spirit. In fact, an opportunity is afforded for those persons who are appointed examiners to assist in mitigating the sectarian differences of the country, merging them in a more national sentiment, though still leaving to conviction and conscience absolute freedom on points of positive belief. After these purely preliminary inquiries, suitable for every class of life, the plan contemplates examination in one of four different courses of study, each simple enough in itself. The student may devote himself to his own language and history, or to the study of German and French and the elements of Latin, or to mathematical science abstract and applied, or to physics and the practical sciences. No young man can attain certain proficiency in either of these branches without at the same time attaining some degree of knowledge in the others, or at least possessing the means and capacity for teaching himself further. But the course of examination held out suggests how be may apply his mind to acquire such attainments as will be useful to him in his future occupations. Thus, without imposing any restraint upon the course of education—without confining students to any one branch—an incentive is offered for concentration upon one or other of those branches of study which will be most useful. Such a suggestive concentration cannot fail to be valuable to students in the choice of their studies, to parents in the direction of their children, and to schoolmasters in the arrangement of their schools so as to secure the largest number of pupils and the greatest amount of certified success. Hence we may calculate, that while the plan leaves complete freedom for education, it will impart something like a uniform tendency and a nationality to the education of all classes.

But the plan still presents this remarkable amission—it does nothing to supply schools for the middle classes ; the very thing wanted. It is assumed, no doubt, that those schools which already exist will be so guided and modified by the proposed examinations that they will adapt themselves to the system, and will spontaneously supply the want. Should this expectation be disappointed, the continued deficiency would probably suggest an other mode of meeting the requirement. Lord John Russell, Sir John Pakington, and others, have been agitating to bring about a system of, education for the working classes; though why local public schools should-be limited tothe working classes it is difficult to understand. The suggestive offer now made by Oxford conveys rather a broad hint that the middle classes had, better bestir themselves to procure the best machinery for such instruction as would lead up to the proposed examinations. How this could be done better than by a combination of residents in a particular district we do not see. If the district schools were efficient in their constitution, they would teach the working classes how to fit themselves. for the examinations ; but then, why exclude the middle claases—why exclude the sons of any ratepayers ?

If in lien of the bills proposed by Lord John Russell, Sir John Pakington, and the combined Manchester Education party, a permissive act were passed, authorizing the establishment of district schools with a curriculum conformable to the proposed course of examination, every requirement for working class, for middle class, or for moneyed class, would be supplied. We should then have a state education with local support and local control, on the voluntary principle. Should such a class of schools be developed, it certainly would do nothing to injure the business of the schoolmaster ; quite the reverse. There might not perhaps be so many persons drawn into precarious speculation in the "classical academies," "commercial establishments," or that sort of thing ; but more men would be required to carry on the duties of teacher,, the opportunities of promotion would be considerable in proportion to the magnitude of the schools, and again the encouragement of the State would develop a. spontaneous growth. It is in this way that the Oxford plan, if it be successful, may foster the development of a national system of education, thoroughly suited to the actual state of the country-, although not exactly such as the earnest friends of education have designed.

WALES INCOGNITO.

THE Prince of Wales has been moving about incognito, and is to travel abroad in the same abated condition. "But what is the use of his incognito when everybody knows who he is ?" we have heard it asked. The use is considerable. The travelling in that avatar of royalty amounts to laying aside the panoply of state, and. moving about like "any other gentleman" who desires to see the country without embarrassment. It might have been well for some of the Prince's predecessors if they had learned a little more of the land that they seemed destined to govern.; for, strange to say, the sons of his house have not been travelled, in any sense of the word, with one remarkable exception. George the First, who became King of England at the age of fifty-four, never so much as " inspected " this country ; but annually, when he wanted locomotion, he went back to his beloved Hanover. Perhaps his ignorance of England, English, and the English, contributed to the painful incidents of his reign—the general misgovernment, and insurrection, or attempts at insurrection, quenched in blood.

George the Second was already thirty-one years old when his father was proclaimed King of Great Britain. As Prince of Wales, he was appointed guardian of the kingdom in his father's absence ; and he became slightly popular, partly because he seemed to join the Opposition to the Court, as the Prince of Wales is wont to do. But he really knew nothing about the people, little about the language, and he made no attempt to attain a knowledge of the country. Of his eldest son, who died still Prince of Wales in his fortyfourth year, the popular epitaph ran,

" Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead : There is no more to be said."

He was brought up in Germany, and of England principally knew its gaming-tables.

George the Third was the first of the house born in England. The sort of popularity which he attained is well known ; and he did travel a little in England, besides living in the country and cultivating sheep. When he was twenty years of age, the Prince, accompanied by Lord Bute, took a trip to Scotland incognito. The rarity of the event made it misunderstood. While the travellers were changing horses at Edinburgh, they were recognized by a cavalry-officer, who, anxious to know what important business had brought the Prince to Scotland, took horse, dogged them from Edinburgh to the West of Scotland, to the Isle of Bate, and by another route back to Edinburgh : yet this little tour was the chief personal information which George had about his dominions beyond the range of his own parks and farm. Perhaps "the good old days when George the Third was King" might have been more popular if that simple-minded man had been a little better informed.

George the Fourth lived in a systematic ignorance of everything but some fraction' and that not the best fraction, of " the upper classes." Rather late in life he made state journeys ; but-none other except progresses, which were not state Progresses, to the race-courses, and to Mrs. Fitzherbert's house in Brighton. Of the country that he was to govern he knew little beyond that stratum which is called "life," and of which it may be -truly said that in the midst of life we are in death. One consequence was, that he took England to be France, a courtgoverned land, and himself to be a Louis Quatorze, only more comme il faut •' and when het went abroad among his people, he attracted a mob like an alien, the mob sometimes treating him like-an enemy. • -William the Fourth was the first King of the Hanoverian line who regularly launched into travelling, and that partly from the accident of the profession chosen for him. A man in the Navy must be a drawingroom sailor indeed who can avoid travelling-, and Williainwas a real sailor. From the time whenhe was thirteen years old, and entered as midshipman on board the Prince George of 98 guns, he was engaged in a round of locomotion, which made him acquainted not only with some foreign lands but with many parts of his own future dominions, especially in the Colonies, and with the actual way of life in other classes besides the royal. His father made him win his way to promotion ; he himself, according to the anecdotes told, appears not to have been disinelined to the same manly independence ; and, like Louis Philippe, he was twice in real action. He knew a midshipman's life even to the fighting, for he was able to defend himself with his fists "like any common boy." But even William, the exception to the homekeeping character of his house, did not travel in England. It was his want of acquaintance with England, no doubt, which contributed to give him a false character for exclusiveness and arbitrary feelings while he was the unpopular Duke of Clarence. It was his knowledge of other classes, and of the world, which helped him to his popularity when he first ascended the throne. • It amounts to a truism, that it would be always better if a man placed in so important a position as that of sovereign or likely, to be so placed, were to become acquainted with the land in which he was to be enthroned, from top to bottom in the real habits and daily life of his people. Yet hitherto this indispensable part of royal schooling appears to have been omitted. Now it is quite impossible that the heir-apparent to a throne, if he can never forget the prince in youth, should acquire even a topographical acquaintance with his country. Processions cannot move over hill and dale, in highways and byways ; and still less can the understanding enter into communion with the things around it, while by the forms of state the mind can only move in procession.

THE SHEDDON CASE.

TIIE objection made to the appeal proposed by Lord Grey in the Sheddon case applies not only to the particular incidents, but to any kind of appeal that would be effectual in complete revision of the whole circumstances of any case. It seemed to be assumed by those who objected to Lord Grey, that in order to obtain the advantage of an appeal, it is necessary for the story on one side to be true ; and the absence of a really judicial consideration of the subject was in nothing more conspicuous than in the heat with which the Lord Chancellor took up the cause "on the other side." The story told by Lord Grey is excessively complicated in its details, simple in its general nature. Mr. Sheddon is the son of a gentleman who settled in New York before the revolution, and who there contracted two marriages with the same lady ; one a civil marriage without any religious ceremony, the other an ecclesiastical marriage almost at the death of the husband. In the interval between the two marriages he had a son, the petitioner; and he kit as executor of his will a Mr. John Patrick his nephew, sending the son to Scotland to be under another nephew, William Patrick, as guardian. By various means the son was kept away from Scotland, prevented from entering the law, the study of which might have been inconvenient, and debarred from a knowledge of the affairs of his family until after he had acquired a fortune in India by independent exertion. In the mean time the sufficiency of the second marriage was denied. Mrs. Sheddon was treated as a person of light character, and the Patricks took the Sheddon property as heirs at law, on the ground that the son was illegitimate. After his attention was called to the case, Sheddon the son, who was then somewhat advanced in life, discovered a correspondence which is described as clearly establishing the case of the conspiracy, and, he took proceedings at law. But the proceedings always went upon technical points, such as the sufficiency of the second marriage, or the retrospective effect of the second marriage in legitimating the children according to Scotch but not according to American law. Now it was the law of New York that a civil marriage without religious ceremony was sufficient ; the evidence of the first marriage is forthcoming ; the reasons why the second marriage was alleged, and not the first, can be fully explained ; and a variety of other circumstances establish the right of Mr. Sheddon to be his father's heir. Such is the story. The answer is, that all the points have been submitted to adjudication and settled : that as to the general narration, it rests only upon ouesided assertion, unsustained by judicial proof ; and that it is contradicted by the extremely high character of Mr. William Patrick. Lord Grey was subjectedto severe censure from the Lord Chancellor for reopening the case at all, and for using his privilege as a Peer of Parliament to circulate statements derogatory to so extremely respectable a perste]. as Mr. William Patrick. Lord Grey's motion for submitting the case to a Select Committee was negatived by 19 to 11; so that the two statements, entirely contradictory of each other, remain without any settlement. Mr. Sheddon is branded as an illegitimate son, who has no right to the property of his father, though the father's intention of leaving it to him does not appear to be questioned ; and Mr. William Patrick is accused of carrying out a conspiracy, though he is a person of

eat repute in his native country, Scotland. Lawyers of the highest standing in the House, Lord St. Leonards on the one side and Lord Lyndhurst on the other, differ as to the force of the facts presented ; Lord St. Leonards expressly contracting his view to the evidence brought before the courts of law and equity; Lord Lyndhurst extending his view to fads which have subsequently been stated, and taking in the whole of the ease.

The debate is left in a cdndition upon which it is impossible to come to a conclusion, except the bare conclusion that on neither side has justice been rendered.

Now it frequently happens that questions come before the courts of law and equity in an imperfect state. The method of treating them in the several courts is, naturally and properly, designed to limit the view to the particular point stated. The judgments on this point most usually have the effect of establish ing certain conclusions upon them, and the mind of an ordinary law court is very much influenced by the fact of previous judgments. We remember a case which occurred not leng since in which there was virtually more than one appeal. In the last stage, the facts upon which the previous judgment was given were shown to have been distorted by the witnesses; . new. evi demee was brought forward, of a kind not very easy to establish, but exceedingly effective in a dramatic sense ; and the result was, that the original judgment was confirmed as ff the n evi dence had been sustained. The new evidence operated as a pretext upon which the court may be said to have adhered to its prejudices. The period of the American revolution gave rise to ninny eases in which severance between parent and child, between testator and heir, gave the opportunity for wrongous possession..

Instances arose in which collateral relations became agents for the' property on behalf of absentees, appropriated the property, to

themselves, and in one way shuffled off the heirs either with a modicum of payment in lieu of the whole or with nothing at all. In almost all such cases there was some kind of technical pro ceeding which was afterwards used to foreclose the claim of the heirs. The records of the older States are full of such instances. If there is conspiracy, there is no doubt that a high character for

regularity and probity furnishes one of the strongest instruments that a wrongous possessor can employ ; so that it constitutes no evidence in bar of inquiry.

If we are to suppose for a moment that Mr. Sheddon's story is true, we establish this fact. A man may be debarred from his. rightful inheritance by a tissue of technicalities ; ho may bring evidence that he has been debarred against justice and law, but he is denied any revision of the purely technical decisions that have been used to keep him out ; and when he alleges the hypo critical use of technicalities, he is told, first, that his opponent is of too high a character to be accused, and secondly, that there is no existing tribunal with a comprehensiveness of view sufficient to meet his ease. We come to a conclusion, therefore, that the tribunals of this country aro not sufficient to render justice in a class of cases that have occurred and will again occur. In his anxiety to obtain justice, Lord Grey asked for a Select Committee of the House of Lords : he was told that there was no precedent—that is, that we have not yet begun to do justice in such cases. Lord Brougham thought the inquiry "must desirable," but he suggested that Lord Grey might proceed by bring ing in a bill to reverse the judgment on the previous trial. Lord Redesdale objected to special legislation in the ease, and would supply any defect in the law by general legislation : yet we may be sure that session after session would pass away before any bill, for a general purpose could overcome the innumerable technical. objections that would be advanced against it. The whole case and the debate amount to a confession that one tribunal is abso lutely wanting in this country ; that is, an Appeal Court, capable of rising above the technicalities of law—of taking the whole circumstances of a case into consideration, and of decreeing substantial justice.

A BETTER USE FOR CHELSEA HOSPITAL. • Fr had been proposed to supply a hospital for sick and invalided soldiers ; it was estimated that the building would cost 150,000/. The estimate has already been exceeded by 110,000!.; and it is discovered that the place is an unwholesome marsh.

The limes, however, points out that there was no necessity to supply a new budding at all. If a hospital for soldiers was wanted, we have it already, in Chelsea Hospital. The purpose to which that building was destined is admirable in its origin ; the name of Nell Gwynne will never be forgotten by English soldiers, and the building is a monument of Charles the Second's better qualities. But since those days we have learned how veterans of humble rank can be provided for more suitably to their way of life. Why, says the Times' withhold relief from. the invalided soldier unless he will enter the house ? Out-door relief is always more popular, and a larger share of comfort could be given to the superannuated soldier by allowing him to return to his own natural home, with a sufficient increase of pay to provide for his food and lodging. In fact, less public money would give to the same number of soldiers a larger share of comfort and happiness in their last days. At Chelsea we have the building required for the hospital, with sufficient space for any additions and alterations that medical wants could demand. London is at least as near as Southampton to the several places in the United Kingdom where invalided or diseased soldiers may be found; it is nearer to most places. But, in these days of railway travelling, distance scarcely constitutes an element in the consideration. Distance, however, is a consideration where the higher medical aid is required; and Chelsea Hospital is close to the largest resources which England can command in the way of medical science.